Mayan writings do not predict the
end of the world when the calendar cycle ends
in December - but according to the producer of
an upcoming documentary about the Central American
civilization, they do make the sobering prediction
that three-quarters of the earth's population
will be wiped out in the ensuing 15 to 20 years.

And those who live, insisted producer Raul Julia-Levy,
will need to quickly colonize outer space, just
as he said the Mayans did.

"This is the most critical time in human
history, and mankind is going to have to face
the music," said Julia-Levy, the son of
the late actor Raul Julia and producer of "Revelations
of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond."

In an exclusive interview with TheWrap, Julia-Levy
claimed that his privately-financed documentary,
which begins production this week in Mexico,
will drop a series of bombshells that look to
the future and draw connections between the Mayans
and extra-terrestrials.

The revelations, he said, will be "every
archaeologist's nightmare."

Julia-Levy said that with the cooperation
of the Mexican government, the film will
reveal for the first time a chamber inside
the Mayan pyramid at Calakmul - which,
he added, Mexico has named "the Temple
of the Mayan Extra-Terrestrial Inscriptions."

He also said that the National Mayan Council
of Elders of Guatemala will bring together
all 650 of its members for a scene in which
they will expose their 3,750-year-old sacred
books for the first time.

Inside those books, he said, is information
about "the beginning of the collapse
of the human race," which will take
place during the next two decades.

Obviously, claims of prophecies and extra-terrestrials
will be greeted with some disdain by many
in the archaeological community. "Anybody
that is a phony and cannot be taken seriously," said
Dr. Richard D. Hansen, the director of
the Mirador Basin Project in Guatemala
and the Senior Scientist at the Institute
for Mesoamerican Research in the Department
of Anthropology at Idaho State University,
when contacted by TheWrap.

"I understand people are skeptical,
but I got news for you," insisted
Julia-Levy. "This is not going to
be a movie for UFO aficionados. We're introducing
evidence, facts and the truth.

"And according to the Mayan Council,
archaeologists have been lying to the world
and covering things up. They don't know
how to read the Mayan codices, and they
don't know what the Mayan Council knows."

What the council knows, he said, is based
on books that date back nearly 4,000 years.

"I spoke to the president of the
Mayan Council, Apolinario Chile Pixtun,
who said that these may not be the best
things to reveal, because some of them
are very negative.

But he said that humans need to understand
what's going to happen in order to make
changes, starting with our own environment.
We're sitting on a time bomb."

One big change that the Mayan books suggest,
he said, is space travel. "This planet
is not designed for seven billion people," he
said. "These sacred books will encourage
humans to explore and colonize other planets,
just like the Mayans did."

Julia-Levy will produce and also narrate
the film; he compares the approach to the
one Werner Herzog used in "Cave of
Forgotten Dreams."

He also claimed to have enlisted the participation
of astronomers from the Vatican to be interviewed
for the film. (The Vatican has not made
any official comment on extra-terrestrial
life, but in 2008 the director of the Vatican
Observatory wrote that aliens could exist
without contradicting the Catholic faith.)

The film, which begins production on Friday
and starts principal photography on April
5, was financed and will be executive produced
by Elisabeth Thieriot, with Ed Elbert and
Sheila McCarthy producing. Juan Diego Rodriguez
and Eduardo Vertiz are executive producers
in Guatemala and Mexico, respectively.

Shooting will take place for a month,
and Julia-Levy promised to have a teaser
within about six weeks and to release the
film well before the December date on which
the Mayan calendar cycle ends.

"We have to hurry up to be out way
before December," he said. "People
think that'll be the end of the world,
so we have to release it so that people
know the world won't be ending on December
21.

"It won't be the end of the world,
but the real (deal) is going to happen
in the next 15 to 20 years," he said. "And
I'm not interested in anything but the
truth."